This lesson examines the crisis in Ukraine. First, students hold a brief discussion on what they think
is the most important news story going on. Then they read and discuss a background piece on the
crisis in Ukraine. Next, in small groups, they role play international lawyers and analyze Ukraine’s
1994 Budapest Memorandum, an agreement among Ukraine, Russia, the U.S., and the U.K.
Ethiopia is staking its hopes on its $4.5 billion hydroelectric dam. Egypt fears it will cut into its water supplies. President Trump is mediating.
The dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia over the $4.5 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam — Africa’s largest, with a reservoir about the size of London — has become a national preoccupation in both countries, stoking patriotism, deep-seated fears and even murmurs of war.
The former French president is accused of accepting campaign cash from the Libyan leader. The rush to bomb Gaddafi gets a necessary second look.
https://theintercept.com/2018/04/28/sarkozy-gaddafi-libya-bombing/
Does the concept of sovereignty apply to cyberspace? Is the maintenance of territorial and conceptual boundaries associated with national sovereignty compatible with an interconnected, independent cyberspace? If not, is the default alternative a reinterpretation of the power and authority of nation-states? Must reconstruction or deconstruction of politically sovereign entities occur in order to conform to the inherently “free” nature of a digital era?
Link to a larger pdf discussing the issue of sovereignty in cyberspace.
Universal jurisdiction, the idea that any nation’s courts can try people for atrocities committed anywhere, has gained as a tool of human rights lawyers battling impunity.
Why is universal jurisdiction needed?
Some countries lack adequate judicial systems to prosecute crimes of this magnitude committed on their own soil. And some nations simply don’t want to prosecute them — especially if their leaders or other powerful figures would be implicated.
That poses a threat to a core tenet of the rule of law everywhere, legal advocates say.
An IB Global Politics Site 